Page 1 of 1

While the Nintendo Wii has come to offer lots of new ideas in the game world, it is inherently not suited for every type of genre. Fighting games are clearly the biggest hurdle and while some companies such as Midway and Sammy have opted to experiment with finished games using the Wii remote, Namco decided to go a different route with their most prized fighting game franchise, Soul Calibur. Instead of a fighting game, it is simply an action game, with a heavier emphasis on story and character then is permitted within the bounds of an arcade born fighting game.

While initial previews were not always favorable, Namco assured everyone that the game was in capable hands of many fellow Project Soul developers and not farmed out to a smaller studio to capitalize  on the name brand and Wii success.  Now that the game is finally out it is very disappointing to see the results.

To start off, the good news is that the game takes a more varied role with the remote, While games such as the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Super Mario Galaxy prefer a simple shake to get an attack action done, Soul Calibur Legends takes into account swinging left to right, right to left, downwards, upwards and thrusting forward. These of course can be used to make combos and it is surprisingly satisfying to imitate classic Soul Calibur moves by using logical motions with the Wii remote. One area the motion controls fail is on the nunchuk where the motion of it is used for dashing in one of four directions; however, it's a total gamble to use and most players will simply forget about dashing.

Musically the game is actually pleasant on the ears: the opening and ending compositions are very well done, and evoke fond memories of past games in the franchise. While there are forgettable tracks, the music on the whole stays consistent with quality throughout the duration of the game.

Everything else in the game quickly falls apart, on the other hand. The first thing to notice is the graphics: they are just plain bad. The developers claimed to be pushing the Wii hardware with this game, and knowing what Project Soul did with Soul Calibur 2 and 3 last gen, the only answer is they were lying. It cannot be argued that this game is doing more by being an action game instead of a fighting game because the levels in this game are incredibly small, almost all consist of purely square and rectangular areas, and there is almost zero architecture. Devil May Cry came out in 2001 and looks almost a generation of hardware better then this game. While the areas are mostly enclosed, the few times you do see an open space or hallway the game shows that it has a draw distance as bad as an N64 game and even has "pop up" objects. The only bright side is the game runs at an almost constant 60 fps, though it can dip on some larger creatures using a special move, which even still begs the question of why, when there is so little else going on in the game world.

The gameplay for the first few hours is actually pretty fun, As you journey across locations around the globe, at first being given neat backgrounds to the levels. This quickly fades away when it soon revealed that the game has only eight levels, and one arena. These levels are not massive by any stretch of the imagination, they are all incredibly small, and as noted, very basic in design. Soon the game actually stops giving you reasons for going back to the same level by the fifth time you have to replay it and defeat a boss that was already said to be dead by the game. This really begs the question of if this game is really nothing more then a leftover bonus mode from Soul Calibur 3 or an off shoot from Sould Calibur 4 handed down to the Wii after it took off sales wise. Replaying a level more then three times is nothing more then lazy, and when the whole game is replaying the same eight levels around six times each, it is stretching into being redundant.  Boss battles soon become incredibly frustrating, as they are totally invincible while glowing, meaning you have to simply avoid their non stop barrage of attacks until they dim for a few seconds to land some strikes in. Another cardinal sin of the gameplay is the fact there are no checkpoints whatsoever. While none of the game quests are terribly long, if you die you start at the very beginning. Even if you make it to a boss fight, prefaced by a cutscene, if you die, you have to start the whole level over and of course the boss fight over again. Games have had checkpoints since the 1980's and somehow the developers forgot about this fact while making this game. The most aggravating part about this is the fact that a level on its own is almost never a challenge,but a cheap boss fight will require you to traverse through boring quests multiple times when you should be starting at the boss fight instead.

Presentation-wise the game is a mixed bag. It has plenty of good artwork and a halfway decent opening, but much of the game is told through text over character artwork -- it looks very similar to fire emblem, and I did not personally mind that part so much, since the character designs are just as good as ever. The voice acting is pretty average; nothing to rave about or reach for the mute button for. The story, however, is pretty odd considering it is supposed to be between Soul Edge and Soul Calibur. By the end of the game characters like Mitsurugi, Ivy, and Astaroth are all working together to destroy Soul Edge, yet by the story set forth in Soul Calibur 1-3 these characters are all trying to acquire the sword for their own greedy purposes. In other words, the game does not actually fit into the Soul Calibur series, despite being made by the creators of the franchise. Another sticking point for fans of the series might be the fact there are only six playable Soul Calibur characters, and only one non-playable Soul Calibur character, Cervantes. The seventh member of your party is Lloyd Irving from the GameCube RPG "Tales of Symphonia". This is not a guest character like Link in Soul Calibur 2 -- Lloyd is a main character tied to the central plot and has many lines and thankfully a new english voice actor. Any other Soul Calibur characters seemingly do not exist despite traveling all over the world and meeting plenty of faces. There is no mention of Killik, Xiangua, Maxi, or Sueng Mina -- at all. This is just puzzling to see, since this is the most story focused Soul Calibur game yet. The story itself is pretty bad though: every character monologues constantly about wanting power, and the power to protect those they love. This would be a fine motive, but it is repeated over and over both in game by the voice actors and in between levels in the text based conversations. The question of seeking power is beaten over your head so much that by the end of the game, you will agree with the last bosses final line about not caring about power anymore.

Overall this game is simply shameful not only as a stand-alone action title, but even more shameful in being based off one of the best fighting franchises in the world, and the fact that it was made by the Soul Calibur development team. It is really hard to imagine how this game turned out so bad, other then perhaps it was a small budget with a really close deadline to complete it. The creators of this game are capable of so much better, and they proved this almost ten years ago.